Tag Archives: hospital

My worst pain I have ever had was waking up from a c-section with all the meds wearing off at once. I apparently process painkillers faster than most people so the doctors were not expecting me to wake up then, and they were not expecting me to feel like my stomach was being ripped out. They, rightfully, were rather shocked when I started screaming in sheer terror as i believed my stomach was being pulled from my body.

And my stomach had been pulled out, or at least the baby. Still, they gave me some more pain killers and I was able to deal with the pain. Once the pain killers wore off I was able to handle the pain a bit more, since they didn’t work well on me anyway, and live with the pain. But that initial shock of waking up, feeling my guts on fire, that was too much for my mind to take and all I could do was scream for that moment.

It’s been decades since that day and it doesn’t bother me anymore. In fact most pain I just deal with because pain is part of my life. My wrists hurt, my lungs hurt, my knees and ankles hurt, my lower back hurts. I don’t generally talk about it or make a fuss unless it gets really bad because this is just the thing I’ve lived with almost every day for as long as I can remember. Occasionally I’ll pop an over the counter pain killer so I can get a little sleep, or push myself a little harder, but in general it is just how life is.

I’m more concerned about loosing my mind than I am my body. My body is failing, I have all sorts of medical problems now, and that’s okay. That’s part of getting older. What scares me are those days when my medications, or the food I eat, or the path I took that brought me through something I’m allergic to starts to make my mind start slip. The days when I feel like every thought has to push through a thick fog before I can reach for a word. I’m an author, words are my trade, and loosing my words, loosing the ability to tell stories and let others see the passion I have….that is truly terrifying. That is what keeps me pushing to write more, finish more books…before I can’t write anymore.

I spent an entire day in the emergency room because of this “mental fog” that had me nearly passing out, and unable to function. And all they could tell me was it might be my medication. That’s scary, knowing there’s something wrong but having no answers, and no way of figuring out why this is happening.

I hope it’s the medication. I won’t be on it anymore after next week, so maybe that will get better. We’ll see. But every day, every moment, I am going to try to write more, and use the words I have while I have them. Because some day I might not have any more words left to write.